Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Associate Professor in Organic Chemistry Maurie Trewhella, of Victoria University (Australia), has just made a stunning claim about global warming, in a letter to the editor.
According to Trewhella;
Ian Dunlop’s warning (Comment, 7/4) is especially sobering. The slowing of atmospheric temperature rise over the past 15 years or so, used by climate change sceptics to debunk the work of the IPCC, is, on the contrary, evidence that the solar energy delivered to the Earth is being absorbed by the oceans. The Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets are acting as giant dampers to contain temperature rise in the oceans. When both of these ice sheets melt away in the next decade or so, the rise in both ocean and atmospheric temperatures will accelerate rapidly and demonstrate that the passing of the tipping points that Dunlop expresses concern about has, indeed, occurred. …
I’m not certain which article by Ian Dunlop Professor Trewhella was responding to, but this article, full of alarmist claims about tipping points and the “dangers” of economic growth, seems fairly typical of Dunlop’s writing.
Professor Trewhella is a person of substance within Australian academia. The press release Ephedrine’s green dream details advanced work being performed by Associate Professor Trewhella and colleagues on yeast, to economically produce important medicines (interestingly their innovation, in this case, involved large quantities of CO2).
To obtain a Chemistry qualification in Australia, you have to study Thermodynamics at an advanced level. Part of being a qualified Chemist in Australia, is knowing how much heat it takes to melt a block of ice.
Does Professor Trewhella really believe that the Antarctic and Arctic ice sheets will “melt away in the next decade”? I hope not. But whatever led to this letter being published, it seems careless to say the least, for the reputation of a man of science, to be associated with such a ridiculous claim.
Perhaps he meant to write “ice shelves” rather than “ice sheets”. It is still a stretch though.
Ice shelve info:
https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/iceshelves.html
Ice sheet info:
https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/icesheets.html
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/833/264/1ed.gif
Max, is that you with the sunglasses?
Max is short for Maxine.
Max,
You may be short for Maxine but some girls dig short guys.
Blonde on the right then
Actually, I’m 6’1″ (185cm), so I can’t help but notice the cute tall gal on the left.
(Now if I could only find my Way Way Back Machine.)
Oh this is so me when I say something at parties! My wife now asks me in advance to keep my mouth shut.
What nasty has been dropped on the floor??
Reblogged this on john namnik and commented:
Reblogging this post as this is first evidence i have seen of Ian Dunlop’s contribution to AGW. Dunlop is the OZ main man for the CLUB OF ROME. Does any reader have further evidence of the CLUB’S involvement in AGW?
Hello Professor Trewhella.
Yes, who is this?
London calling!
Who?
London.
Oh, yes, right.
Well, you’ve been claiming that the Arctic and Antarctic Ice sheets have been absorbing all the global warming!
Well, yes, right.
Are you barking mad?
What?
Mad, as in stupid, imbecilic.
Me?
Yes, you.
Oh, well Ian said it was true.
Forget Ian, what do you think?
Me?
Yes, you.
Well, I guess whatever Ian says is OK.
Really?
Yes.
Alright then, Ok.
Do you mean, ‘London Calling’ as in The Clash:
‘The ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in
Meltdown expected, the wheat is growin’ thin
Engines stop running, but I have no fear
‘Cause London is drowning, and I, I live by the river’
Oh, I’m going o be singing that all day now, thanks!
According to learned professor, this is map of the South-East in a decade or so
http://vrstudio.buffalo.edu/~depape/warming/europeCloseup.jpg
I live in SW London, but do own a peace of ground on the N. Downs (Charing hill), so moving from a big island to a much smaller one isn’t going to be too distressing, I hope.
typo – piece.
however, if it does happen the ‘peace’ would turn into chaos.
London calling was the very early wireless introduction for station 2LO
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/onlinestuff/stories/2lo.aspx
http://markpadfield.com/marconicalling/museum/html/objects/sounds/objects-i=1010.024-t=5-n=0.html
From my childhood years in an ‘expired’ country, I sort of remember Kate Boyle’s : ‘Hello …. this is London calling, can we have your votes please”
Yes, I’m old enough to remember that we called Katie, ‘posh totty’…
From the French judges (if they gave us anything at all, but usually didn’t)… “And finally, Royaume-Uni, deux points.”
“Thank you, Paris.” she used to say, “And goodnight.”
Everyone else had given us at least six points, but not the Irish or the French, even if would have been written by Lennon & McCartney!
so this “missing heat” that was supposed to have warmed the atmosphere somehow went into the ocean (but was not predicted by their camp). If the amount of missing heat would have contributed 0.2C in the atmosphere over 10 years, went instead into the ocean (by some unexplained mechanism of heat transfer) then that would translate to perhaps 0.0002C in water temp (I am assuming 1000X heat capacity/C for the oceans versus air). and this would melt the ice?
Trewhella Is simply lying to the public.
The public is stoopid and will believe it.
We think we are so much better than the Salem witch trials in the 1690’s but in truth must of the population is still as gullible and will believe, without question, whatever authority figures tell them.
Most people don’t know the difference between sea ice and an ice cap. They have no concept of the thermal heat capacity of millions of cubic miles of ice. Most people don’t know the difference between the Arctic and Antarctic. They are figuratively still in the Stone Age.
Correction. They are literally in the Stoned Age.
Really good Max. Good explanation for some of their opinions too.
Just to confirm your analysis. See if you can spot the schoolboy error in this article.
“Case in point: A ship full of global warmists heads off on an expedition to Antarctica to prove that the ice shelf there is melting so fast that every beachfront house in the world will soon be swept away by a massive tsunami.
But instead of finding a sad polar bear stuck on a tiny ice sheet, the adventurers found their ship stuck — in ice.”
Yes, no polar bears in the Antartic!!! That’s a shocker. Where have they all gone?
From: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/5/curl-irony-alert-global-warmists-get-stuck-in-ice/?page=all
correction — they are educationally still in the stone age
Eugene WR Gallun
And Professor Trewhella, since it rarely gets above freezing on Antarctic land ice (except around the edges in summer) how exactly is this melting suppose to happen?
“Because science!
Hater!”
😉
Rarely? How about never in the interior..
J. Philip Peterson sez:
Well, it’s those tipping points. If the world tips too much, the Antarctic land ice just falls off into space.
He needs to keep the anti-CO2 eco-green scam alive so he can get more acceptance of his supercritical CO2 process for extracting the precursor chemical (PAC) that is used in making to ephedrine. Ephedrine is the popular decongestant, it is also the key precursor chemical used by Methamphetamine (speed) producers.
Maybe he should disclose his COI??
So a Green way to make Meth. What will the Ecoterrorist’s think of next??
..You guys remember this when you’re out in public………..
Is he a Climate Scientist?
Who is?
Whoever it is we are supposed to believe. So even though his field of expertise seems to be pharmacology, I suppose he is a Climate Scientist. Sceptical meteorologists, geologists, etc., can be ignored because they aren’t Climate Scientists.
Who isn’t?
RoHa.
Everyone’s a Climate Scientist these days.
Eamon
Hmmm… According to Levitus et al, the top 2000 meters of oceans have only risen by about 0.09C from 1955~2010, which is enough to raise atmospheric temps by 0.09C…(deltaT=mass*specific heat*Joules of energy).
Just where do they think all this energy to melt the ice caps is going to come from?
Moreover, the Arctic’s Ice Extent has been recovering since 2007, and should continue to recover as the AMO slowly moves to its 30-yr cool cycle around 2020. The Antartic Ice Extent has been growing for the past 35 years and set the largest Ice Extent ever recorded last year…
BTW, I love that for the past 3 years, the warmunists keep referring to The Pause as being “about 15 years”…. They should now be expressing the duration as “about 20 years”…
Years ago yours truly marched in the Chicago Gay Pride Parade. Some time prior to that I had volunteered to be an activist for a feminist organization. I figured volunteering for a feminist organization might be a good way to meet an interesting young woman. Since I ultimately discovered myself marching in a gay pride parade it goes without saying that my strategy did not achieve its intended purpose (although I guess I said it anyway).
Different feminist organizations in Chicago, while independent, or answering to their national chapters, were also loosely bound under the umbrella of a larger, single feminist organization. The gay community was always very supportive of women’s rights issues. To return the favor this umbrella organization showed support in kind by being present at the gay pride parade and inviting the other feminist groups. That is how I found myself there.
As the parade was being assembled one of the young women from the umbrella organization approached me, and without so much as batting an eye or exhibiting a hint of irony, she asked me (although it really wasn’t a request), since I was the only man present amongst the feminist groups, if I could walk behind all of them.
Got that? Here was somebody who would have condemned the Jim Crow laws of the South doing the exact same damn thing. Over the years I have discovered to my amazement (and later, amusement) that racism, bigotry, sexism, and all those other similar noxious tendencies were certainly not the exclusive features of the right. They’re present across the entire range of human beliefs. And deserve to be recognized as a feature of the human condition and called out wherever and whenever they’re seen.
And, that brings me to a quote by Ian Dunlop copied from the link provided in the above post: ‘These changes will require unprecedented co-operation, and statesmanship of the highest order. It is too much to expect the male-dominated, eminence-grise of the incumbency to rise to the occasion, but women might. There is a precedent.’
Oh, I’m certain there’s a precedent there; a precedent behind Ian’s vulgar statement that’s much older than all of us; and will remain a part of the human condition until it’s genuinely recognized by its self righteous practitioners. Perhaps a start might come from Professor Trewhella. But I think not.
There once was a fellow, Bob, who was forever striking out with the ladies. But he had a friend who was a babe magnet. So one day Bob asked his friend for advice. His friend, happy to lend a helping hand, offered the following:
“Put on a speedo. Put a potato in the speedo. Go to the Huntington Beach Pier on a sunny weekend and strut to and fro with confidence. You can’t lose.”
Bob gave it a go, but alas … nothing.
Later that evening, Bob, dejected, asked his friend why the plan didn’t work. After reviewing Bob’s steps, his friend suggested, “The potato goes in the front.”
Thanks Max. You don’t have to rub it in. Aw, what the hell, go ahead and rub it in.
BTW: Potato in front or back is irrelevant. I can assure you, nobody wants to see me in a speedo.
Ha ha like it!!!
That was the joke going around when Algore ran for pres. Supposedly Naomi Wolfe gave him the potato advice.
as a true blue Australian these reports are making all of us sick to death of these so called scientists predictions
I for one am looking forward to the Prof Trewhella countdown clock widget on the sidebar of WUWT.
Yes? Mr. Watts?
Trewhella has had his 15 minutes of fame here on WUWT. Let’s not stretch it. Let him be forgotten.
Statement already de-bunked by his own side press:
While Arctic sea ice continues to decline, Antarctic levels are confounding the world’s most trusted climate models with record highs for the third year running…The past three winters have all produced record levels of ice.
The Guardian, Australian edition, 10 Oct 2014
Thank you to: http://climatechangepredictions.org/
Count your blessing, mates… and the ready supply of demonstrably silly AGW acolytes like Professor Trewhella! They serve as laughable poster children for the comic AGW catechism.
Right!!!! This will happen the day after Hell freezes over.
Brandon Gates April 11, 2015 at 7:14 pm
I don’t know how much more clear I can be: he muffed it.
I watched a schlocky crime drama the other night in which the murder weapon was repeatedly referred to as a shovel, despite it being obviously a spade. You might say they muffed it.
This guy made a statement that as written is (absent an act of g_d per your comment upthread) physically impossible, even allowing for enormous latitude in terms of his intent, the claim is preposterous, would require that the supposed heat going into the ocean be mitigated by melting ice which is instead increasing, and all this by a scientist with the clear credentials to know the facts. So did he “muff” it? Or knowingly make false statement?
Great that you make clear in your comments how wrong he is, but you continue to downplay the gravity of his comment. This isn’t some stupid crime drama we’re discussing here. The welfare and lives of billions rest on the outcome of this debate. He should be excoriated.
davidmhoffer,
In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think it’s as grievous as you make it out to be — he’s not a major player in AGW research. I think I’m entitled to a reasoned opinion based on putting things into perspective, don’t you?
Something you may be missing in my arguments here and about: If it were my byline at the top of this post I would have rang him up and asked him for a statement of clarification and asked him a few hard questions about things I know to be inconsistent with what’s been published about the cryosphere. If he’d fed me the same errors or stonewalled me, yeah, then I’d have a story and I’d make some hay of it — especially if he were a consensus AGW heavy.
On that much we agree.
Come now, don’t hold back. For being at odds with published literature about ice melt, or something else?
davidmhoffer,
I accidentally skipped that. How in the hell should I know, I can’t read the man’s mind! See again: I think the proper thing to do is to ask those questions of the person who made the statement, THEN go to press.
Brandon Gates April 11, 2015 at 9:52 pm says;
“I think the proper thing to do is to ask those questions of the person who made the statement, THEN go to press.”
Novel concept.
The other thing I learned in that class was, “If you have something you want to say, find someone to say it for you.”
But you did not learn that. You blather on and on, post after post, talking and talking but never really tying any of it together. Like a savant who is extremely capable, but has no understanding of the meaning or place.
This bloke sounds like he’s just trying to get the attention of the press by name-dropping and using the sensationalist tactics of Obamascience (or high pressure sales) to create urgency. Now days even bad press will make you a bigshot, so get it any way you can. Perhaps it will get him a place of honor in the new world order, to have helped in keeping the masses spellbound while the power and wealth were reallocated.
If you want your moment in the limelight, make a prediction. They will have forgotten who made it by the time it never happens…
If you wish to be immortalized for your hubris, make a prediction and then keep insisting that current events were predicted by your original theory, and there are just missing parts or delays involved in the fulfillment of your prophecy.
“The slowing of atmospheric temperature rise over the past 15 years or so, used by climate change sceptics to debunk the work of the IPCC, is, on the contrary, evidence that the solar energy delivered to the Earth is being absorbed by the oceans”
No it isn’t. The only way he can claim such a presumptuous thing is to accept, without any science whatsoever, that the IPCC’s CO2 caused warming is being absorbed by the oceans.
What he claims is “evidence” is no more that a baseless notion being misrepresented as scientific evidence.
I believe there is a North American saying ” Professor in the class, dumb on the bus”.
The head of the math dept. at the Univ. which I retired from told me that he thought his new (1985) car’s A/C was not functioning. When he took it to the dealer, they checked it out and then showed him that the heat slider was still on the “red” side (he bought the car in cold weather) and should be on the “blue” side to cool. I can’t believe the guy told me he was so mechanically inept but I guess he thought it was related to my job of maintaining the temperatures of the campus buildings.
In Australia we are blessed with professors – Trewhella, Gillard, Flannery,
Palmer, etc.
What a bloody bunch of jokes!!
So he just met his publish or perish requirement, gets at least another two years, and didn’t have to even break a sweat. Stupid?
mods, I keep getting note, WUWT wants to track your physical location. I decline, and X out the box. Then my screen is repeatedly pulled to your video ad a the bottom of the post. WUWT
Mods, I keep getting a note, “WUWT wants to track your physical location”. I decline, and X out the box. Then my screen is repeatedly pulled to your video add at the bottom of the post. WUWT?
(There, fixed the typos, but it took me three times to the bottom of the main post while typing this.)
I got that once also, figured it was some kind of malware, and besides who needs Anthony or any of his cohorts tracking me down 🙂
yes, though it odd, but since it acts like it is connected to the add, I thought WUWT should know.
I’ve been getting it too, quite annoying. It’s settled down the past hour or so.
I’ve got Norton anti-virus running in real-time, it keeps the teenagers at bay.
The NSA uses your location so that when the time comes, the EPA can activate the Tantalus Field device on Climate blasphemers and apostates.
Tried these folks (text yourself and let them know how you feel):
Sounds like a PUP that spoofs as the website you’re on to get location info and tie it to your buying or surfing habits. I’d try Malwarebytes free if you haven’t yet.
Calculate the volume of Artic ice. Calculate the volume of the atmosphere and heat it by the outside range of IPCC temps. Wouldn’t be enough energy to ever melt all the artic ice, even not allowing for any resultant cooling.